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“Yet you seem to have some custom,” he observed. Distant singing came from two floors below, and the parlor had seemed well populated when he passed.
“Och, aye. The desperate ones. I leave them to Maybelle to deal with; di
“Let me wish you a happy Christmas, then,” he said, watching her with amused affection. She popped one of the sweetmeats into her mouth, closed her eyes, and sighed in ecstasy.
“Mmp,” she said, not pausing to swallow before inserting and masticating another. From the cordial intonation of this remark, he assumed her to be returning the sentiment.
He’d known it was Christmas Eve, of course, but had somehow put the knowledge of it out of his head during the long, cold hours of the day. It had poured all day, driving needles of freezing rain, augmented now and then by irritable bursts of hail, and he’d been chilled through since just before dawn, when Mi
Nessie’s room was small but elegant, and smelled comfortably of sleep. Her bed was vast, hung with woolen bed curtains done in the very fashionable pink and black “Queen Charlotte” checks. Tired, cold, and hungry as he was, he felt the pull of that warm, inviting cavern, with its mounds of goose-down pillows, quilts, and clean, soft sheets. What would she think, he wondered, if he asked to share her bed for the night?
“A fire to sit by, and folk to sit with.” Well, he had that, at least for the moment.
Grey became aware of a low buzzing noise, something like a trapped bluebottle flinging itself against a windowpane. Glancing toward the sound, he perceived that what he had thought to be merely a heap of rumpled bedclothes in fact contained a body; the elaborately passementeried tassel of a nightcap trailed across the pillow.
“That’s no but Rab,” said an amused Scottish voice, and he turned to find her gri
He realized, even as he blushed, that he liked her not only for herself, or for her skill as an intelligence agent, but because she had an unexcelled ability to disconcert him. He thought she did not know the shape of his own desires exactly, but she’d been a whore since childhood and likely had a shrewd apprehension of almost anyone’s desires, whether conscious or not.
“Oh, I think not,” he said politely. “I shouldn’t wish to disturb your husband.” He tried not to think of Rab MacNab’s brutal hands and solid thighs; Rab had been a chairman, before his marriage to Nessie and the success of the brothel they owned. Surely he didn’t also … ?
“Ye couldna wake yon wee oaf wi’ ca
“Speak o’ ca
“No, I thank you. I haven’t much time. But I will take a drop to keep the cold out, thank you.”
The whisky—she drank nothing else, scorning gin as a beggar’s drink and regarding wine as good but insufficient to its purpose—warmed him, and his wet coat had begun to steam in the fire’s heat.
“Ye’ve not much time,” she said. “Why’s that, then?”
“I’m bound for France,” he said. “In the morning.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she put another comfit in her mouth.
“ ’Oo ’don me tkp Kismus wi yrfmily?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, my dear,” he said, smiling nonetheless. “My brother suffered a bad attack last night. His heart, the quack says, but I doubt he really knows. The usual Christmas di
“I’m that sorry to hear,” Nessie said, more clearly. She wiped sugar from the corner of her mouth, brow puckered with a troubled frown. “His lordship’s a fine man.”
“Yes, he—” He stopped, staring at her. “You’ve met my brother?”
Nessie dimpled demurely at him.
“Discretion is a madam’s most val-u-able stock in trade,” she chanted, clearly parroting the wisdom of a former employer.
“Says the woman who’s spying for me.” He was trying to envision Hal … or perhaps not to envision Hal … for surely he wouldn’t … to spare Mi
“Aye, well, spying’s no the same as idle gossip, now, is it? I want tea, even if you don’t. Talking’s thirsty work.” She rang the bell for the porter, then turned back, one eyebrow raised. “Your brother’s dying, and ye’re goin’ to France? Must be summat urgent, then.”
“He’s not dying,” Grey said sharply. The thought of it split the carpet at his feet, a gri
“He … had a shock. Word was brought that his youngest son was wounded in America and has been captured.”
Her eyes widened at that, and she clutched the dressing gown closer to her nonexistent breasts.
“The youngest. That would be … Henry, no?”
“It would. And how the devil do you know that?” he demanded, agitation making his voice harsh. A gap-toothed smile glimmered at him, but then went away as she saw the depth of his distress.
“One of his lordship’s footmen is a regular,” she said simply. “Thursdays; it’s his night off.”
“Oh.” He sat still, hands on his knees, trying to bring his thoughts—and his feelings—under some kind of control. “It—I see.”
“It’s late in the year to be getting messages from America, no?” She glanced at the window, which was covered in layers of red velvet and lace that were unable to keep out the sound of lashing rain. “Did a late ship come in?”
“Yes. Blown off course and limped in to Brest with a wounded mainmast. The message was brought overland.”
“And is it Brest ye’re going to, then?”
“It is not.”
A soft scratching came at the door before she could ask anything further, and she went to let in the porter, who had—without being asked, Grey noted—brought up a tray laden with tea things, including a thickly iced cake.
He turned it over in his mind. Could he tell her? But she hadn’t been joking about discretion, he knew. In her own way, she kept secrets as much—and as well—as he did.
“It’s about William,” he said, as she shut the door and turned back to him.
HE KNEW DAWN WAS near, from the ache in his bones and the faint chime of his pocket watch. There was no sign of it in the sky. Clouds the color of chimney sweepings brushed the rooves of London, and the streets were blacker than they had been at midnight, all lanterns having been long since extinguished, all hearth fires burnt low.
He’d been up all night. There were things he must do; he ought to go home and sleep for a few hours before catching the Dover coach. He couldn’t go without seeing Hal once more, though. Just to assure himself.
There were lights in the windows of Argus House. Even with the drapes drawn, a faint gleam showed on the wet cobbles outside. It was snowing thickly, but wasn’t yet sticking to the ground. There was a good chance that the coach would be detained—was sure to be slow, bogged down on the miry roads.
Speaking of coaches—his heart gave a sickly leap at the sight of a battered-looking carriage standing in the porte cochere, which he thought belonged to the doctor.
His thump at the door was answered at once by a half-dressed footman, nightshirt tucked hastily into his breeches. The man’s anxious face relaxed a little when he recognized Grey.